The New Juaben North Municipal Assembly, one of the newly established Municipalities in Ghana, has made a remarkable stride in its quest to use technology to maximize revenue and promote good financial governance regime.
The Assembly has currently digitized 525 streets totalling 167.017 meters on digitized parcels of 6.824 land level which is one of the highest coverage so far in the country.
The Assembly has built a strong spatial database embedded with revenue mobilization data connected to a real-time revenue management software – Domestic Revenue Mobilization Management (DRM) with the assistance of GIZ, a German Development Corporation.
The software requires five critical variable -street addressing, property evaluation, a comprehensive database on revenue generation sources, Gazetted Fee fixing, have assembly Logo and Authorised signature which the Assembly has achieved.
Again, the Assembly has built gender-based data on properties and businesses in the municipality to inform its revenue mobilization decisions and trained bits revenue collectors on the technology.
This came to light during a presentation by the Municipal Physical Planning Officer, George Ayensu when Dr Matthias Witt -a Senior Advisor, Good Financial Governance, GIZ, visited the Municipality for assessment of the Project.
The project is part of the Support for Decentralization Reforms (SfDR) Programme being implemented by the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (MLGRD) with Technical Support from GIZ and its partners.
The program aims at providing technical support for improved development of the beneficiary Assemblies in the areas of improved revenue mobilization by 20%, Planning and Budgeting, and Improving Development Cooperation.
The New Juaben North Municipal Assembly is among the 20 Assemblies added to the already existing 16 beneficiary assemblies five weeks ago.
The New Juaben Municipal Planning Officer, George Ayensu said the street naming exercise will be extended and completed at Effiduase and Asokore communities by close of this year.
GIZ impressed, MCE optimistic
Mr Mathias Witt of GIZ was impressed with the feat of New Juaben North Assembly and expressed optimism it would help reduce communication cost, cost of collection of revenue and ensure transparency into the financial regime of the Assembly.
He pledged GIZ’s support to the Assembly to complete the project.
The MCE, Madam Comfort Asante was also optimistic the Assembly will qualify for the next face support of the project to help improve its revenue generation and mobilization to provide strong financial resources to embark on development to improve the living standards of the people.
“We are a newborn district but notwithstanding we are not resting our oars, rather we are doing all that we can and with the competent team available, I know we shall get there,” the MCE said.
Source: Ghana/Starrfm.com.gh/103.5FM/Kojo Ansah
